Dear good people of Finance,
It is with no small amount of good fortune that I have been asked to write another blog – this time to report on the Directorates Management Accounting Team Away Day (afternoon) that we enjoyed on 17th March.
We embarked on our afternoon knowing that we’d be presented with a ‘motivational talk’, an enjoyable team lunch at Fusion followed by the opportunity to be locked in a room with the prospect of escape dependant entirely on our own wits!!
The day was co-ordinated by Bernie in-league with a group of Events students determined to produce a successful event under the watchful eyes of their assessors. They had arranged for all proceeds of the event to be donated to the Cathedral Archer Project – a charity that helps homeless people.
The motivational speaker was Perry Timms. Really more of a Professor of teamwork, he was fascinated in what makes teams succeed or not. He talked in detail about the importance of having a clear purpose, common values, accountability and, interestingly, autonomy – to be given the authority / responsibility to get on and do a good job. You may remember when we gave stories of when we felt most engaged – all included autonomy. This moved Perry onto ‘Trust’. He spoke about how people feel more valued, and are more productive, when they are trusted to do a good job. Perry gave us far too many insights to include in this blog but it is delightful to note most are already apparent in Finance.
If you are wondering what to have for your lunch then allow me to suggest meat, which will put you in a good mood, and oranges, which will help your cognitive memory abilities – or so Fusion will have you believe. They fed us both to help us with our team-building day. After lunch we commenced with an enlightening get-to-know-each-other exercise. Each person delivered two true statements about themselves and one false and the rest of the group was to determine which was false. I’m revealing nothing, but don’t ask Sohil about his pigeons or Bernie about the Girl Guides if you know what’s good for you!
After preparing with the Teamwork Professor and taking on-board the optimal sustenance we arrived at ‘Escape Rooms – A Real Life Escape Room Game’. With a heavy blend of excitement and nerves the seven of us were blindfolded and callously thrown into the cells of Alcatraz with fifty minutes to escape. The idea is to, henceforth, solve problems and puzzles in a bid to find a way out – think of the Crystal Maze but you’re all in together and you have much more to do.
What happened in Alcatraz stays in Alcatraz but I can reveal that we had a fantastically fun time, worked well as a team and escaped our forsaken incarceration in a swift 41mins 47secs. There were two particularly pleasing aspects to our adventure. Firstly, everyone contributed to our escape and, despite a large team of seven, involvement at the nub of progress was fairly equally spread out. Second, was the existence of ‘Trust’, the Professor would be pleased. I remember Sohil, Andy and I working to solve a puzzle, without any idea where it had come from, and shouted the answer to Bernie without any idea what she was going to do with it. In turn, Bernie accepted our puzzle solution and moved on with it without any idea where it had come from. Trust! At different times during the escape different people were busily solving problems and were trusted to do it well.
So, in conclusion, I am not only recommending Escape Rooms for an enjoyable and rewarding team-building activity, which I do so highly, but am also slinging down the gauntlet in confident bravado to challenge your team to escape from Alcatraz, or one of their three other rooms, in a quicker time. What say you to that?
